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Best Finder alternatives / File managers

Janichsan said:
When you have a Macbook, Magic Trackpad, or (probably) Magic Mouse, you can scroll through the tabs by swiping left and right. It's the same in FL3 – and, amongst others, the Finder.

If there's no way to scroll through the tabs with a standard mouse with a simple mousewheel that would definitely be an oversight.
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Thanks, you're right. Didn't think of swiping left/right using the trackpad - it works.

The mousewheel doesn't work for scrolling through the tabs. Hopefully they add this as well as scroll buttons for the tabs.

Janichsan said:
I'm not really a fan of FL4 now following the same single window design philosphy as Apple's own applications, with for instance the Activity display no longer being a separate, floating window but a screen space consuming additional sidebar.

Apart from that and the general visual redesign, FL4 seems virtually identical to the previous version. Same functions, and pretty much the same performance. I honestly don't see much reasons to upgrade right now (other than maybe the desire to support the developers).
Click to expand...

Agree with the Activity display taking up space, although the sidebar can be disabled.

The whole FL 4 window just feels like it doesn't have enough space especially if using on a laptop display with FL showing 2 panes.

 
hunkster said:
I tested it quite a lot today, and Forklift 4 is very basic.

Not Good:
2. Also, if you open more tabs, the new tabs get hidden because there isn't enough space to fit. There's no scroll button - seems to be a bug.
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Hold the Shift key down while scrolling to scroll through tabs.
hunkster said:
3. Folder sizes are not displayed. You have to click the i button for each folder then click Calculate to find out the size.
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Yeah, that's one of the few things about ForkLift 4 that annoys me to no end.
 
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svenmany said:
QSpace shows more folders in my iCloud Drive than ForkLift does. I think ForkLift doesn't bother showing empty folders, which is a problem. To be fair, Finder also only shows a subset of folders, though more than those shown by ForkLift. On my computer, QSpace's iCloud drive support seems better than ForkLift's.
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wierd, mine is a German system and qspace only shows me 5 folders, but no pages, keynote and else like FL does
 
dwfaust said:
... and the cynic in me asks that since they control the update cycle, how many updates do you really expect in that "free" extension period?
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In my case, a coincidence, but I just have to laugh at my "luck" - my 12 month free upgrades expired 3 days before v4.0 was released. 🙄

I'd probably re-up anyway, as who wants to be stuck on a point-zero release? And they make good software and price it reasonably.

I'm in no rush to upgrade though, but when I do, I'll likely re-up for 2 years, as my first year on Forklift has been good enough that I'm not looking for an alternative anymore.
 
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tosbsas said:
wierd, mine is a German system and qspace only shows me 5 folders, but no pages, keynote and else like FL does
Click to expand...
I have a german system too, but qspace set to english (because its translation is terrible) and it shows everything in the iCloud drive.
 
I've been playing with QSpace, and I am really liking it... some of the settings are a bit convoluted, and they seem to be placed randomly though the various places (Settings, right-click context menu, etc)... the one thing that I miss most compared to both ForkLift and PathFinder is the large preview area. In QSpace, there is a separate preview window per pane, which automatically reduces the size of the preview by half or more (depending on the number of panes you have configured).

I've been testing the STASH feature, which has proven pretty handy for oft used files... and loving the SERVER functions... have added an SFTP connection as well as Dropbox, One Drive and Google Drives.

I have it installed on both my Mac Studio and my M2 MBA... but haven't found a way to export the settings from one computer to be able to apply them to the other...

The price is right... $14 for the Pro version, plus $1 each for the STASH and the SERVER functions... I am curious to see what they do with updates and how they are priced going forward.
 
started to play too. Looks really nice, and I will keep on trying it. Still accustomed to FL with several Tabs open, but well. Thing that bothers me a bit is that the dev is Chinese apparently and so far I never got any answer on my emails
 
tosbsas said:
started to play too. Looks really nice, and I will keep on trying it. Still accustomed to FL with several Tabs open, but well. Thing that bothers me a bit is that the dev is Chinese apparently and so far I never got any answer on my emails
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Nice... I just emailed him about transferring the settings... so we will see how that goes. 😀
 
dwfaust said:
I have it installed on both my Mac Studio and my M2 MBA... but haven't found a way to export the settings from one computer to be able to apply them to the other...
Click to expand...

In the setting panel, at the bottom, there are three dots. You can use that to export your settings.

tosbsas said:
did anyone find out what the active folder setting is about
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That's a pretty cool feature. When you turn it on, you can see a small folder appear in the preferences right next to the checkbox. You drag that to Finder's sidebar. Then, whenever you have a save dialog, that sidebar entry will be there which will give you immediate access to all the locations that are open in QSpace. It's an amazing thing.

tosbsas said:
Thing that bothers me a bit is that the dev is Chinese apparently and so far I never got any answer on my emails
Click to expand...

The Chinese part bothers me, but I've decided to ignore it. The software does make a connection to Hangzhou China, probably for software update check. I've been using the software for a couple of days constantly and the last time it connected there was two days ago.
 
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svenmany said:
That's a pretty cool feature. When you turn it on, you can see a small folder appear in the preferences right next to the checkbox. You drag that to Finder's sidebar. Then, whenever you have a save dialog, that sidebar entry will be there which will give you immediate access to all the locations that are open in QSpace. It's an amazing thing.
Click to expand...
yo say Finder Sidebar, right?
 
tosbsas said:
yo say Finder Sidebar, right?
Click to expand...
Yes. Drag that small folder icon from QSpace’s settings directly to Finder’s sidebar. Don’t drag it to QSpace’s sidebar. It’s the contents of Finder’s sidebar that appear in save and open dialogs’ sidebars.
 
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In Finder's listview I can press tab to select the next file, but in QSpace it select the next pane. Is there a way to configure this? I'm just too used to press tab to go to the next file. I think ctrl+tab to switch pane would be a good combo.
I couldn't find a hotkey setting for it, but there are so many, so I probably just missed it?
 
Diskutant said:
In Finder's listview I can press tab to select the next file, but in QSpace it select the next pane. Is there a way to configure this? I'm just too used to press tab to go to the next file. I think ctrl+tab to switch pane would be a good combo.
I couldn't find a hotkey setting for it, but there are so many, so I probably just missed it?
Click to expand...

one more question/issue with QSpace... it appears that there is not an option for multiple tabs within a pane... I can open multiple folders in each pane with ForkLift and Pathfinder, but don't see how to do that in QSpace...

And like you, I agree that there are way too many settings spread across the app in no obvious semblance of order... but again, I am really starting to like the product.
 
tosbsas said:
started to play too. Looks really nice, and I will keep on trying it. Still accustomed to FL with several Tabs open, but well. Thing that bothers me a bit is that the dev is Chinese apparently and so far I never got any answer on my emails
Click to expand...
Hmmm the QSpace developer replied me the next day after I sent my email.
 
dwfaust said:
one more question/issue with QSpace... it appears that there is not an option for multiple tabs within a pane... I can open multiple folders in each pane with ForkLift and Pathfinder, but don't see how to do that in QSpace...

And like you, I agree that there are way too many settings spread across the app in no obvious semblance of order... but again, I am really starting to like the product.
Click to expand...

The multiple panes are within tabs, rather than the other way around. When I have multiple tabs open in one window, each will have its own collection of panes. For example, one tab could be configured with 3 panes and another with 4. Each tab label shows the folders names of each pane within it. I can see that would be counterintuitive if you're accustomed to the other approach.

I've spent a lot of time working through the settings. There are quite a few gems. The app is very configurable. I'd rather suffer through learning the settings rather than reduce the configurability.

Diskutant said:
In Finder's listview I can press tab to select the next file, but in QSpace it select the next pane. Is there a way to configure this? I'm just too used to press tab to go to the next file. I think ctrl+tab to switch pane would be a good combo.
I couldn't find a hotkey setting for it, but there are so many, so I probably just missed it?
Click to expand...

I don't see that either. I've always used the arrow keys for that. Since I use list view almost exclusively, the arrow keys provide the ability to expand and collapse.
 
Janichsan said:
As I mentioned, it's just disabled by default. You have to turn the calculation on first in the View Options.
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Enabled it, thanks.

Doesn't seem to show folder sizes on my mounted rclone drives, but on mounted hard disks, the sizes show up.
Seems to be a local-only feature.
 
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One thing about QSpace Pro's search is that it uses Spotlight.

I asked the developer about this because while searching for folders by name inside network drives, Commander One and Forklift 4 quickly and easily found them, but QSpace had trouble with it, probably because Spotlight didn't index these network drives.
 
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